


Two by Two

by twohearts



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23652196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twohearts/pseuds/twohearts
Summary: How do you tell your sister there’s another you inside of your head? How do you even begin to conceptualize that?Kara deals with the fallout of absorbing Red Daughter.
Relationships: Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers, Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers & Red Daughter | Linda Lee, Kara Danvers & Red Daughter | Linda Lee
Comments: 3
Kudos: 56





	Two by Two

Sometimes when Kara woke up, she could hear the tweeting of birds in the distance. She would take in a deep breath, smile, and let it out slowly. It was nice to hear the birds; it was calming.

All those years ago, Kara had told Alex they didn’t have birds on Krypton. It was funny, looking back, how interested she’d been in these little winged creatures. So much was different on Earth, from the culture to the people; it was all so overwhelming. One misstep with either and Kara would be discovered. Birds, though, were safe. They were strange, an extraordinary difference, but not one that put her or her loved ones in peril.

They simply were and Kara adored them for that.

Red Daughter loved birds as well, as Kara later found out. For Red Daughter, though, liking the creatures wasn’t as straightforward.

Her first memory of them was in a forest. Snow covered the ground and bare trees let her see for miles and miles even without her x-ray vision. It was not her first time out in the world, but it was the first time she had the chance to immerse herself in it.

She closed her eyes, a little reticent to give up her amazing view, but immediately found that there were still new things to discover about the world even with her eyes closed.

It was the crunch of snow under a soldier’s feet, clear as day even a hundred miles away. It was the rustle of wind as it raced around the leafless trees. It was the birds, cawing at everything and nothing.

But then it had all turned too much. The noises began to rip each other apart. Mumbles and whispers. Crunches and stomps. Roars and caws. She could not place where they came from.

Kara sympathized. How could she not?

Red Daughter stepped away from nature after that. It was not by choice, but it did match how she was feeling. Outside… outside was too much. Her powers seemed never ending; she needed walls to keep them in line, not wide-open spaces where they could run rampant.

That changed. Later. After Lex. After Mikhail. After the White House.

But it wasn’t until she woke up in Kara’s bed, early in the morning- far earlier than Kara would ever normally wake up- that she began to enjoy the sounds of birds again.

“If you’re not feeling well, you need to tell me.” Alex removed her hand from the base of Kara’s skull.

“I’ve just had a headache for a few days.” Kara said. She turned to look at Kelly. “Please talk some sense into your girlfriend.”

“I’m a psychologist not a miracle worker.”

“Ha. Ha.” Alex deadpanned as she took out a small flashlight and shone it into each of Kara’s eyes.

Red Daughter blinked. She’d been examined before. Medical exams were routine at the base in Kaznia. She was not used to someone so… familiar poking and prodding her though.

The Kaznian doctors had been clinical and, though entirely out of their depths, as thorough as possible. They had handled her with gloves and masks, and written numbers in little leather-bound notebooks.

Alex wore no such mask or gloves. Her hands were soft against Red Daughter’s skin. And unlike the Kaznian doctors, she asked before touching.

Kara had rolled her eyes and said “sure,” but Red Daughter appreciated the consideration.

“Find anything?” Kara asked helpfully.

“You don’t have a concussion.” Alex replied. “It’s just a headache? No other symptoms?”

Kara hopped up from the couch where Alex had been examining her. “Honestly, I probably just haven’t been getting enough sleep. I keep waking up _super_ early.”

“Fine.” Alex conceded. “Just go to bed earlier and see what happens, because I honestly don’t think there’s enough Ibuprofen in the world to create a dosage that could help you.”

How do you tell your sister there’s another you inside of your head? How do you tell yourself that?

Of course, Kara knew about Red Daughter, and vice versa. But there was a difference between knowing and feeling, and Kara was having a hard time feeling Red Daughter’s presence.

She wasn’t a person, separate or otherwise. She wasn’t a contrarian voice echoing through Kara’s head. Not a parasite or an add-on. She just was.

Kara didn’t know how to explain it, not to herself and not to Alex.

J’onn set a pot of water to boil as Kara made herself comfortable on the couch. She had refused to sit until he gave her express permission to do so and sat himself.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” He asked.

Her eyes had gone wide, as though such a routine question had taken her by surprise, and then opened and closed her mouth several times before muttering. “Tea.”

Even in the kitchen, he could hear her fighting to get comfortable on his leather couch. And when he returned, she was standing again.

“Is everything alright?” He asked, already knowing the answer.

Kara shook her head. Then nodded. Then cringed.

It was in that moment J’onn looked at her, really looked at her. Kara was standing perfectly straight, her shoulders stiff, and she had not stopped making eye contact since he re-entered the room. Her hands were at her sides, peaking out from the oversized sweater she wore; its softness completely mismatched with the stiffness of her posture.

J’onn took a step forward. Kara was but a few feet from him, but she felt so far away.

“I’m taking that as a no.” He said, taking another slow step forward.

Kara let out a rough laugh. It was throatier than he expected, almost as though it was being weighed down.

“What’s happened, Kara?” He tried to keep his voice light. She didn’t seem skittish. Despite everything, her brow was furrowed, not in concentration but in natural seriousness. Her eyes, though wide, were not glossy, but sharp and dark like a hawk’s.

She pointed to her head, resting a finger on her temple. “I know you can’t read my mind, but I thought you might know someone, or some species, or something that could do it. I just… I just really need this.”

She’d balled her hands into fists and was now staring at the ground- the first time she’d broken eye contact since appearing at his doorstep.

J’onn stepped forward and placed a hand around one of Kara’s fists. Her eyes flickered to the contact.

“Let’s sit down.” He said and guided them to the couch.

Kara sat, and after a soft squeeze, J’onn removed his hand from hers.

“I want to help you, but to do that I need to know what’s going on.”

Kara’s hands held her head, blonde hair cascading over her face as she bent forward.

“I don’t even know how to explain it.” She laughed.

“Try.”

“Lex killed Red Daughter. I held her as she died and… I didn’t mean to… but I absorbed her. We became one.” Kara’s voice shook as she spoke.

J’onn nodded. “So there’s two of you in there now?”

“No,” Kara was quick to say. “It’s… it’s like I said. We became one. I’m not… or she’s not…” Kara shook her head.

“Does Alex know this?”

Kara shook her head. “She knows I absorbed Red Daughter, but not that she’s… or we’re… I don’t know how to describe it, because there isn’t really a ‘we,’ like when I think there aren’t two separate streams of thought. And it feels like there should be.”

Kara was standing again; she’d moved in the blink of an eye. J’onn stood to match her, but she waved him down.

“I know who I am, right?” She was speaking quickly. Her mind raced, J’onn didn’t need to be able to read it to know that. “I’m Kara Zor-El and I was born in Argo City on Krypton, but I’m also a nameless person whose first memory is walking out of the snow in Kaznia. I lived in National City and Kaznia at the same time and for some reason those aren’t contradictory memories to me.”

This time J’onn did stand. Kara looked at him, eyes wide again and bright with worry. She’d wrapped her arms around herself, as though to hold herself steady, but a tremor still ran through her.

“I feel like I’m losing it.” Kara finally said. “Or that everyone will think I’m losing it.” 

J’onn took in a breath and Kara curled further in on herself. Before she could speak again, J’onn had wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.

“I don’t think you’re losing it.” He whispered.

“But…”

“You’ve been through something extraordinary, something that cannot easily be described and that isn’t easy to deal with.” He could feel her shaking against his shoulder. “I think considering all of that, you are doing amazingly.”

“I feel like I should be feeling more.”

“It should all be stranger?”

She nodded into his shoulder.

“Isn’t it good that it isn’t?”

Kara shrugged.

“I just want to know that I’m still me.”

It was a new normal, even if it didn’t feel like it.

No one seemed to notice if Kara was a little more brisk, a little less excitable. If her apartment was cleaner and the amount of food she bought was significantly less. If she got headaches more often.

No one noticed, until after the end of the world.

“It’s just so weird.” Alex said over a glass of wine. “I remember everything from our Earth. I remember that whole life, but I also remember my life as it played out here.”

“Tell me about it.” Kara laughed along.

“I just don’t get it.” Alex went on, potentially loosened up by the wine. “It’s like I lived two lives.”

“Yep.” Kara nodded and took another sip of her drink. “Hey, why don’t we…”

“I can remember working alongside Lex. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Sure is.” Kara reached for the wine bottle.

“Are you okay?”

Kara looked up. Alex had her eyebrow raised and was looking back and forth from Kara to the bottle of wine.

“Huh?”

“You’re not usually much of a drinker.”

“Must be the Kaznian in me.” She deadpanned.

“What?”

Kara’s eyes went wide.

“It was a joke.” She said quickly. “I was joking.”

“Kara…”

The next thing Kara knew, she was standing.

“You know,” She said, voice breathy. “I’m feeling kind of tired. Why don’t we call it a night?”

“Kara…” Alex stood too.

“I’m fine, Alex.” She cut her sister off. “I’m just tired and I was joking… because I was tired and…”

The tears began to fall. Kara hadn’t even felt them appear and now they were streaming down her cheeks. She stepped backwards. She couldn’t be around Alex now. She had to go. She had to go.

A part of her was screaming that there was nothing to cry about, that she needed to pull herself together, and as much as she wanted to blame that part on Red Daughter, she knew that that was unfair and untrue.

“Kara,” Alex had moved forward while Kara was distracted. She reached out and took Kara’s hands, stilling them. Kara hadn’t even noticed she’d been shaking. “It’s okay. It’s really okay. I’m not mad or anything. I just want to know what’s going on.”

Kara shook her head. No. She couldn’t explain it.

Her whole body had gone still. And Alex picked up on this, using the opportunity to lead Kara back to the couch, guiding her just as J’onn had done some weeks earlier. What was most concerning was that Kara let her.

“Kara, I am not mad.” Alex squeezed Kara’s hand.

But Kara just shook her head.

“Please tell me what’s going on. I want to help.”

“There’s nothing… there’s nothing you can do.”

Alex tilted her head. “We’ll see about that.”

Red Daughter let herself be swept up in one of Alex’s hugs. It felt good, objectively, to be held by Alex. It was welcome. It was always welcome. And she would take even a moment of time where Alex reminded her why of all things, she had been born only remembering her.

Kara was less satisfied and pulled away.

“You can’t fix this, Alex. J’onn couldn’t and he’s… And maybe there’s nothing to fix. Maybe I’m making a big deal out of nothing.” Her voice was no more than a whisper, even to her own ears.

“If it’s upsetting you, then it isn’t nothing.”

“Ha.” And just like that Kara was laughing. It was thick and dark, and absolutely humorless. “Emotions are not objective.” Red Daughter said finally.

Alex pulled away then, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“Fine. Then tell me what’s bothering you and we can decide if it’s nothing.”

Kara took a deep breath. “You remember Red Daughter?”

“How could I forget?”

“When she died, I guess I absorbed her.”

“Right, you told me that.”

Kara swallowed. “But she didn’t disappear. She’s…” Kara trailed off, left pointing at her temple.

“In your head?”

Kara threw her head back and sighed at the ceiling. “Sort of. She’s there, but it’s not like I’m hearing voices or… I don’t know. We’re just kind of one.”

“Well, that does explain the headaches.”

Kara nodded.

A moment passed where neither sister said anything. Kara was still looking up at the ceiling, more as a mechanism for not crying than anything else. Alex watched her.

“If you’re not hearing voices or anything like that, then what’s worrying you?” Alex finally asked.

“I’m worried,” A quiver had wormed its way into Kara’s voice. “That I’m going to wake up one morning and not be me. That I’m already not me.”

Alex placed a hand over Kara’s and squeezed.

“Kara, do you really think that if you were acting weird, I wouldn’t be hounding you night and day?” Alex laughed.

Kara actually smiled at that.

“No, but… I’m still different than I was before.”

“We’re all different. Every day. Our experiences shape who we are, and you now have a lot of new experiences. But that doesn’t mean you’re not you.”

“How do I know that for sure?”

Alex threw an arm around Kara and pulled her in close.

“You don’t.” Alex’s voice was soft and if Kara had closed her eyes, she could’ve mistaken the voice for Eliza’s. “None of us do. And that’s okay. It’s okay to change.”

Kara nodded. She wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to do.

“But, just for the record, I think you’re the same in every way that matters.”

Kara threw her arms around Alex, finally returning the hug.

“Thank you.” She whispered.

“Unless you like borscht now, in which case I take it all back.”

Kara elbowed Alex. “Shut up.”

“Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
